Tech

Samsung Galaxy Note Pro Proves Bigger Isn't Always Better

Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 Review

Going Pro, Going Big

The Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2, which starts at $750, is the largest Android tablet the company has made. With a high-res screen and multitasking abilities, it's meant for both productivity tasks and media consumption, but it ends up being a master of neither.

Big Screen

The display of the Galaxy Note Pro is a 12.2-inch TFT (thin-film transistor) LCD with an impressive 2,560 x 1,600 resolution. The device is still remarkably thin at 0.13 inch. It's not too heavy at 1.7 pounds, but that's still significantly more than small-screen tablets and the iPad Air.

S Pen

The Pro is part of Samsung's Note line, so it includes the S Pen stylus.

Air Command

Hover the S Pen over the screen, click the button on it, and the Air Command menu appears, showing exactly what you can do with the tool.

Big Tablet

Here's the Galaxy Note Pro compared with the iPad mini, which has a 7.9-inch display.

Compared With iPad Mini

Here's the Note Pro side by side with the iPad mini.

Slim and Sleek Design

The Galaxy Note Pro is just 0.13 inch thick, and the backside sports Samsung's signature faux-leather texture (you can see the "stitched" trim near the edge).

Accessories

Samsung sells accessories to make the Galaxy Note Pro even more productive: a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and a case that both protects the tablet and acts as a stand.

Costly Package

The Pro's accessories cost $70 for the cover, $40 for the mouse and $60 for the keyboard.

Keyboard

The keyboard, like the Note itself, is very thin.

Mouse Pointer

Using the mouse will generate a pointer in the onscreen UI.

Mouse

The mouse is shaped like most, with a curved design, several buttons and a scroll wheel.

Leather Look

The mouse has Samsung's faux-leather trim as well.

S Pen

The S Pen is similar to the design of the stylus in the Galaxy Note 3 smartphone.

Multitasking

Once you enable multitasking, the Note Pro can call up several apps on the screen at once.

Home Button

The home button is a physical button, with capacitive touch buttons for the other Android functions.

Magazine Mode

If you enable Magazine mode, content is served up in several square and rectangular windows, in a Flipboard-like interface. Beyond content, Magazine mode can serve up calendar reminders and a TV guide, among other things.

If there’s a niche in the consumer electronics market, Samsung will fill it, sooner or later. Phablets, fitness bands, smartwatches and nearly every space in between. This approach — largely regarded as the antithesis of Apple’s "one product to rule them all" strategy — has been a big part of what’s made the company’s Galaxy line some of the most popular and recognizable products in all of tech.

Back at CES, the company announced plans to embrace the ever-growing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) movement, and in typical Samsung fashion, it’s gone all-in. The company has a grand total of four new tablets aimed at straddling that line between the personal and the professional — prosumer, if you will. The Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 marks the high end of the spectrum, with its premium look and feel, S Pen functionality, a suite of business-focused apps and a gorgeous — and enormous — 12-inch display.

But such premium features come with a premium price tag. Here that means $750 for the 32GB model and $850 for 64GB one. Both of those are Wi-Fi-only editions, incidentally — Samsung has yet to announcing pricing for the LTE models, but we shudder to think. That price will get you a nice device, but during testing, I found myself circling the same question: Who precisely is this high-end prosumer tablet for? I’m stumped. If I figure out an answer before we finish this review, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Dressed to impress

Samsung’s industrial designs run the gamut from chintzy to sublime. The Note Pro, thankfully, tends toward the latter. After all, if employees are required to adhere to office dress codes, shouldn’t their gadgets? This massive tablet shows up to the job decked out in the same fashions first made popular on the Galaxy Note 3, namely a sort of faux-leather backing with a false stitched border. Don’t worry — it’s not as tacky as it sounds.

Actually, the Pro wears it well. From the back, the slate looks not unlike a leather-covered portfolio. It’s a touch that plays well with the skinny and subtle brushed aluminum sides while adding some traction to your grip. Which isn’t to say the tablet's unwieldy, mind. Actually, for such a massive device, the Galaxy Note Pro is surprisingly slim and light, and the metal framing lends a sense of sturdiness to the proceedings.

Granted, there aren’t all that many 12-inch tablets out there to stack the Pro up against, but believe me when I say that 1.7 pounds isn’t bad at all for a device this size. Compare that to, say, Lenovo’s forthcoming 11-inch Miix 2 tablet, which outweighs the Note by a tenth of a pound. And at 0.13 inches, the Note’s only a fraction as thick as the Lenovo’s beefy 0.43 inches (though, for the record, Lenovo’s device is a fully fledged Windows 8 slate).

That said, this thing is still in an entirely different weight class than the iPad Air, which is to say you’re not going to spend a lot of time holding it in one hand, unless you’re strength training your forearms.

Not surprisingly, the true beauty here lies in that massive 12.2-inch display. The 2,560 x 1,600 resolution works out to a pixel density of 247 pixels per inch (ppi). That’s not quite as dense as the iPad line’s 264 ppi Retina display, but it’s plenty of sharp. Movies look terrific on the big, bright 12-inch display. But who’s got time for movies, when there’s work to be done? Thankfully, the TFT (thin-film transistor) LCD screen will really make those spreadsheets and pie charts pop.

The size of the screen is a real benefit from a productivity standpoint, since it makes multitasking a lot easier than on, say, a seven-inch device. 12.2 inches affords a lot of real estate, so you can have, say, a spreadsheet and note taking app open at the same time — a key feature when introducing any sort of mobile hardware into a work environment. More on that when we get to software.

The speakers are located on the sides of the Pro, meaning the sound that comes out has a more direct route to your ears than those tablets that relegate their grilles to the rear. They’re also positioned toward the top of the device, lessening your chances of accidentally muffling the sound as you hold the tablet. Not that it’s a huge concern — these puppies get loud.

I was pretty amazed when I managed to fill my entire living room with sound, resting the Pro in one corner. Granted, it’s a New York City-sized living room, but still, not too shabby.

When it comes to tablets, volume rarely equates with sound quality, and that’s certainly the case here. If you’re looking to listen to music or watch a movie for any extended period, you’re probably going to want to use that headphone jack. But this is a business tablet, so you were only going to use them for those teleconferences, right?

The sides of the device are also home to a microSD slot, which will let you expand the already generous 32 or 64GB of built-in storage (not to mention the 50GB of free Dropbox storage you’ll get with purchase). Above that is a port that’ll look a bit off to those who haven’t been following Samsung’s recent releases too closely — that’s USB 3.0, which makes for speedier charges and transfers than microUSB. You can still use the older cable for file transfers with your computer, but not charging.

That means you’re going to want to pay special care to the new cord, or else you’ll have an inanimate tablet on your hands in the near future.

Above that is a slot for the S Pen, the little metal-and-plastic peripheral that Samsung can’t bring itself to call a stylus. The S Pen is what designates the Pro as an official member of the Note family — it’s also the one piece of hardware that truly qualifies the tablet for the workplace. While most of the mobile world ditched other input methods from touchscreen typing years ago, Samsung’s since reminded us of the lost art of writing things down. (seriously, when’s the last time you actually took pen to paper?)

The S Pen is nice for short, quickly scrawled reminders, which is why the feature complimented the original Note so well. The canvas has vastly increased over the phablet line, but honestly, I didn’t find myself writing more than a few words at a time while using the note.

Some of this can be chalked up to the fact that technology has, for better or worse, weaned me off of handwriting. Even just using my index fingers on a touchscreen, I’m a much faster typer.

And then there’s the fact that, well, I never had particularly legible handwriting in the first place. That’s why I’ve always considered a fallback career in medicine, should tech writing not work out.

If you’ve got a lot of use out of your Note’s S Pen or you just find yourself jotting things down in a notebook during meetings, the new Pro may prove the perfect balance of analog and digital note taking. The stylus is nearly as large as a full-size pen and you’ve got plenty of room to take notes on that 12.2-inch screen.

Working your apps off

Android 4.4.2 "KitKat" is the Note Pro’s software starting point. As ever, Samsung is unable to leave well enough alone. In the case of this tablet, however, that’s mostly a good thing. While Google’s taken pains to make Android a more robust operating system for the work environment, it still doesn’t compare to desktop OSes when it comes to getting things done.

Included with the Pro are a slew of proprietary apps primarily designed for the S Pen and a bundle including some top enterprise apps and other workplace-friendly offerings like The New York Times and Dropbox.

As ever, Samsung’s added its TouchWiz skin to the proceedings here, but on the homescreen, at least, the touches are mostly subtle — a good thing when shopping around for a work tablet. On the home screen, above a row of default apps, you’ll see two large modules: one for the proprietary S Note app and another featuring some handy quick-glance info — stuff like the time, weather, calendar reminders and stocks.

A swipe to the right will bring you Magazine mode. Everything you’ve heard is true. It’s big, it’s tile-based, it evokes Flipboard and yes, it even has hints of *gasp* Window 8. At its heart, it’s a way of offering up quick news stories in large, graphical widget form. You can customize what’s served up to you via Flipboard.

You can also pull up info from non-news sources like Samsung’s own WatchON, which tells you what’s on local TV at any given time. Apparently Point Break is playing right now. Catch you guys in another two hours.

There are already a million ways to get all of this on Android, including, of course, the aforementioned Flipboard app. The main thing Magazine mode has going for it is that you don’t have to open up a devoted app — it’s just kind of there. The clear downside of that integration is that it’s harder to make go away. Like it or not, Magazine mode is there to stay, but thankfully you can get away with another swipe.

To the left is another implementation of the interface that actually may prove useful, aggregating your calendar/appointments, inbox and office apps. It’s a landing page of sorts for all of your business-y goings-on. As usual, though, most of the skinned additions to Android serve more to distinguish Samsung from countless fellow Android manufacturers rather than bringing any real game-changing functionality.

Pull out the S Pen, hover over the screen while pressing the little gray button near the stylus’ tip, and the Air Command module will pop up on screen. This is a sort of hub for the various S Pen apps, things that let you take notes, search for stuff and just draw on your screen using that little proprietary pen. Handiest among the apps are Action Memo and Pen Window.

The former is really just a quick way to write sticky reminders and send emails. The latter’s even more compelling, using the S Pen as a gateway to Android’s multitasking functionality.

Draw a square and a list of available apps pops up. From here, you can tap an app and it will open in the square you just drew. The feature lets you take full advantage of all that screen real estate by opening up to four apps at the same time. Be forewarned, however: If you try to do too much, the apps will crawl — a not-so-subtle reminder of the fact that laptops are still far more ideal for multitasking.

In fact, all of the enterprise apps that come preloaded on the Pro butt up against the issue. WebEx, Remote PC, e-Meeting — there’s nothing in the app’s tablet version that makes for an objectively better experience. All of them just point to Samsung’s attempt to further blur the line between its consumer tablet line and already well-represented world of business-ready laptops.

Trapped between two worlds

All of this adds up to a pretty nice tablet — and at $750 — $850, it really ought to be. It doesn’t, however, point to a full-fledged laptop replacement. For the majority of office workers out there, the functionality, multitasking and peripherals of a good old-fashioned notebook just make more sense in the workplace.

The fact that Samsung included a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard along with our review unit really drives the point home. If you want those accessories, however (and let’s face it, if you’re planning on doing real work on this thing, you’re going to want them), they’ll run you $40 and $60, respectively.

That’s another $100 to tack onto the base price, which puts the Note pretty firmly into business laptop pricing. Hey, Lenovo’s flagship T-Series ThinkPad line starts right around there.

The tablet does bring some features you tend not to get on your run-of-the-mill notebooks. You’ve got the S Pen and a rear-facing 8-megapixel camera capable of 1080p video. Ultimately, however, the ability to write notes instead of typing them is likely not a game-changer for most, while the sheer size of the device makes using the camera a non-starter.

If you’ve ever watched someone attempt to snap a pic with an iPad, add about two and a half inches of awkwardness to that and you’ll begin to see what I'm talking about. And if all you’re looking for is a nice tablet, you can get one for much cheaper — the iPad Air and Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 both start at $500.

Really, the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 is a device with a pretty expensive identity crisis, but at the end of the day, the tablet’s dressed for the job it wants, not the job it’s capable of. And that’s just not good enough.

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